


Ad Perpetuam Memoriam

by AinZaphir



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Loss, Love, References to Depression, Sex, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 03:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15451911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/pseuds/AinZaphir
Summary: After the Archon is defeated, Sara's job as pathfinder is far from over. Ten years in, and she is still cleaning up the remaining Kett in the galaxy. A collection of very short stories.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamsindigital](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsindigital/gifts).



> For Dreamsindigital who has been wonderful in helping me review my work, here's a surprise for you! :D I hope you like it!

Ryder 1, ten years after day 0

 

Sara was standing, contemplating her life thus far. This was the first time she had visited her father since he had died, a little over ten years ago. She felt awful for not coming to visit him sooner, but there it was. It wasn’t really her father though, she had to remind herself, it was a monument to him. A stone-cold statue without a persona. 

“Just like dad was”, Sara said to herself. Perhaps that was why she kept referring to it as ‘him’ rather than ‘it’. Regardless, she hadn’t been to Ryder 1 since it was called Habitat 7 unless she could help it. She hadn’t wanted to- she certainly had not wished to see his statue, not after she had learnt what he had done to Ellen. But today, in all of her loneliness and the aftermath of her desperate attempts at avoiding being stationed out of Habitat 7, she wanted to see him.

Footsteps snapped her out of her thoughts and she looked towards the edge of the path where she saw the dark figure whose footsteps she presumed she was hearing. Whomever it was had stopped at the sight of her, probably thinking they too would be alone out here and discovered to their greatest disappointment that they weren’t.

“Oh, sorry” The minute he voiced his apology, she had recognized his voice.

“Harry?” She asked, just to confirm it was really him.

“Sara?” He replied. How long had it been since she last saw Harry Carlyle? Could it have been at that awful Nexus party where she had brought Reyes to everyone’s dismay? She really hoped that hadn’t been it, even though it had pissed Addison off at the time thus counted as a win.

“Didn’t know you came here…” The memorial park was located on the outskirts of ‘Settlement Alpha’ on Habitat 7, now known as the capitol of Ryder 1. It seemed unlikely he would have any other reason to be there other than to see her father, something he quickly confirmed.

“I do, sometimes. Whenever something goes wrong, whenever someone dies... or when they don’t. I remind myself what could have happened if I’d just...”

“Yeah...” Sara filled in the end of his sentence. She knew what he was thinking. If something had just gone different, then maybe all of the horrible things that had happened to them wouldn’t have happened. It was about as optimistic a thought could be in Andromeda.

“How are you?” Harry asked awkwardly.

“Good... good... How about you?” Sara replied. It was obvious he had met the wrong twin on his evening visit. It was a well-known fact that Harry and Scott were on much friendlier terms than even Scott and she was as of late.

“You know, the usual… Hey, how are things going with that guy of yours?”

Sara gave a short laugh. His question confirmed her suspicions- the last time they had seen each other must have been at that awful party, she saw no other reason for this inquiry, weirdly as it felt. She also realized that this was the first time someone had actually referred to her choice of the infamous Reyes Vidal as a partner. The hilarity also lay in part in the timing someone had finally validated him as such. Why do people always insist on asking that when they haven’t seen someone in a while anyway?

“He. That’s the first time someone referred to him as ‘my guy’” She had responded.

“Oh? What do they usually call him?” Harry had asked, clearly identifying her finding the subject humorous.

“It varies” She replied shortly. At Harry’s look of confusion, she specified:

“from ‘scumbag smuggler’ to ‘king of Kadara’”

She shivered with nausea at the latter option. He was the one who usually referred to himself as such, but only in her presence in the privacy of their former house, and with a clear sarcastic undertone.

“Not that it matters anymore. It is a thing of past tense more than present.” It had been nearly a year since she had packed up and left him.

“I’m sorry to hear that...”

“Really?” she said, not able to hide her bemusement from her voice. She was sure it was just another pleasantry what with Harry not knowing what to respond to her statement. She looked him straight in the eye as he answered her.

“Yeah.” Harry replied.

“Why?” She kept her eye contact with him as she inquired further into the matter.

“Excuse me?” He frowned at her.

“Why are you sorry to hear that I, whom you have barely spoken too since you resigned from my team, have broken it off with the shadiest of bastards that you only met once and didn’t like much as I recall it? If Scott is to be believed anyway...” The fact that he looked even more uncomfortable just proved Sara’s earlier point; She reckoned Harry thought he was conversing with the wrong twin, and he was having a hard time at it. Harry got along with Scott much better than he did with her, and he was doing an awful job at masking it in that very moment. His reply had still surprised her.

“I am sorry that it didn’t work out for you, Sara. And I’m sorry that you don’t seem happy.” He said quietly, still not breaking eye contact with her.

“Tell it to Tann, who stationed me out of fucking Habitat 7...” she scoffed. 

“I think we’re supposed to call it Ryder 1 now...”

“It doesn’t matter what we call it, it is still a shithole. Just now, it’s evolved into a shithole with a bit more breathable atmosphere and a familiar name to those of us who’s been awake for long enough.” This had made him chuckle, and she knew why. As she had gotten older, sentences she swore could have belonged to Alec had infiltrated her own. This had been one of those instances.

“I agree.” He nodded at her.

“So why are you living here, then?”

“You are not the only one who have had no say in the matter of where to live as of late. I’m not surprised you hate it; I find it hard to believe anyone who was with us on day 0 would like it here. At least you get to leave every so often.” He hadn’t even bothered to hide the bitterness that tainted his words.

Harry’s admission of hating it there prompted Sara to study him for a second. It seemed he reflected on the outside what Sara had been feeling on the inside as of late. Sara remembered a tall, handsome silver fox with green eyes and a healthy tan, his handsome features tainted with his snarky remarks, yet- the man standing in front of her had big dark circles under his eyes- a good twenty pounds lost from when she had last laid her eyes on him, and he looked paler. Perhaps he had been sick recently, or he really just was as miserable on Habitat 7 as his words indicated. It was probably the latter.

“Ten points to Harry.” She smiled.

“Hm. Yeah. That helps.” He smirked. Good. The snarky doctor wasn’t all lost, then.

 “I gotta get back. It was good seeing you.” Sara said.

“Don’t be a stranger, Sara.” He said.

“Likewise, Harry.” She replied. Sara didn’t know whether or not he had meant it as a pleasantry or if his wish for her not to be a stranger was genuine. Back when they were both stationed on the nexus he had always encouraged her to come and see him if there was anything she needed. She had considered it a few times too, just procrastinated the matter- only coming to see him whenever he had news on Scott. After Scott had awoken and befriended the doctor, she sort of felt wrong to put another of the Ryder twins burden upon him, so she had kept her distance. There was something about the way he looked at her, as if he knew her innermost thoughts that always made her a bit wary of him. Whenever she would put up a charade of being in control and okay, he would somehow always seem to see through it. He had never said anything to confirm this though, he just looked like he somehow could read her mind.

 

* * *

 

3 months later

 

Harry had always had a good sense of right and wrong. But he wasn’t entirely sure he had thought clearly when he had administered the sedatives to the psychotic patient waiting to be shipped off to a treatment facility. He hated the use of force- even sedatives on psychiatric patients. He did not become a surgeon to dwell on the moral and ethical black hole that he felt psychiatry sometimes could become, and he certainly did not become a surgeon just so patients could assault him and leave him with a black eye. Perhaps his main issue with it all was that true consent to procedures could not be given, thus he would have to sometimes do the exact opposite of the patient’s wishes in order for them to survive. He preferred it much more when Lexi was stationed with him so he could have these debates with her, instead of inside his own head. 

Harry preferred his abstract scenarios to be the ones of his choosing, conundrums for his spare time. At work however, he preferred straight forward problems with mostly concrete solutions. Broken bone? Done. Appendicitis? Good. Gunshot-wound to the abdomen? Tricky, but fine. Having to use his mind to find new uses for new types of medicine? Fun, in a challenging way.

Hearing voices as a result of overindulgence induced by whatever coping mechanism this one had chosen to be able to deal with reality as it was? Those things never came with a direct and step-by-step kind of solution. No. Harry was perfectly happy to work in the ER as long as the psych cases didn’t have to be treated by him. He just didn’t know how- psychiatry was the one field in medicine Harry wasn’t well versed in, which was a bit strange considering his preferred field was neurology, more precisely neurosurgery in low-gravity environments. Harry loved the brain, really. The parts of it that he could understand, at least.

And that is how, when Mr. Aldrich had attacked him- Harry had not seen it coming, mostly because he had known Mr. Aldrich. Not well, Harry admitted to himself, but he had never thought him to be violent, especially with his condition. Few people were. So Harry had not seen him clench up at the sight of the sedatives- which had been his second mistake in treating his patient. His first mistake had been not to ask for assistance from the med techs before entering Mr. Aldrich’s room. The third mistake had been not to call APEX immediately once Mr. Aldrich had escaped. He wanted the man caught and helped, not shot dead in the streets.

Harry’s fourth mistake regarding Mr. Aldrich had been to try and talk him down once he had caught up with him instead of using a tranquilizer right away. That was how he had gotten his black eye. At least he had caught and subdued Mr. Aldrich before he managed to inflict some serious harm onto himself. The bruise around his left eye would fade, the swelling had already gone down since the incident.

Harry exited the hospital and made his way towards the pub, only to stop when he saw the group of people sitting there. He was not up for Cora Harper and Lexi T’Perro force-feeding him shots all evening, trying to set him up with whatever woman they would think be his match for the evening. Harry even thought he could hear their remarks: “come on dr. Carlyle, chicks dig scars” or something similar. His assumptions weren’t completely unfounded; They had done so the last time he had sustained a visible injury, and the evening had been complete torture.

There were several things wrong with the statement concerning women and their fondness for scars that was upsetting for him: First of all, some chicks might dig scars, but not the women he would be interested in dating. Second of all, Harry was perfectly able to secure his dates on his own, thank you very much. Besides, he really detested how gossipy and prying his oldest friend could get when trying to set him up, especially when intoxicated. No. This was not the night he had in mind. He decided to instead go to his second place of solace and turned quickly on his heels towards the park.

As Harry made his way to the monument of Alec Ryder, he saw someone there. Not an uncommon occurrence- but ten years after his death had shown a decrease in the amount of people stopping by his gravesite. Harry thought Alec wouldn’t have cared for such attention anyway- what little peace the thought brought him. He still had issues coming to terms with the events that had occurred some 10 years ago on the very planet he was now residing. The person standing at his monument was tall, slender and female. He wondered for a second who she was, but once she spoke, he berated himself internally for not realizing at once. He knew only one woman of her stature to linger in front of it for extended periods of time, and he had seen two of her crewmates just minutes before. 

“Hey Harry. Fancy meeting you here.” Only she didn’t sound as enthusiastic as her words would indicate.

“Sara.” Harry nodded. “Would you like for me to come back later?”

“No. No, It’s fine. You don’t annoy me half as much as other people.” She hadn’t even bothered hiding the boredom tainting her words. The three months since their last rendezvous had not done much for her general mood it seemed, and it was obvious she did not care who knew. They stood in silence for a while, taking in the impression of her father’s statue. He wondered whether or not she too saw the similarities between a statue and his stony demeanor back when he was still alive. She must have had, Scott had commented on it many times. 

“So. Who’d ya kill?” Sara said as casually as if she was just discussing the weather.

“Excuse me?” Harry was caught so off guard he couldn’t hide his shock at her question.

“Who died?”

“No one." 

“Then why are you out here?”

“I made a mistake.”

“But they didn’t die?”

“No.”

“So, it can’t have been that bad?” She questioned. Sara could be so military sometimes it almost made Harry scream at her. This was why they hadn’t gotten along as naturally as he did with her brother, she would always be counting victory versus defeat, not really seeing the greys in-between until after the war. It infuriated him, because he knew she was capable of such thinking, she just chose not to when deep in strategic thoughts, focusing on the goal more than anything else. 

It was a trait he had not only seen, but greatly disagreed with in Alec- a trait Scott had not inherited. Scott was much more like Ellen in his ways, levelheaded, thoughtful and collected. Sara was collected too, but she used it to contain her emotions and put on a poker face so she could be sure to hide herself from the world. Harry knew better. He had seen through it the day they had first met. It was perhaps that which made her so weary of him- she knew that he knew, and the thought of someone unmasking her would have terrified her immensely.

Perhaps this was why she had felt the need to antagonize him the last time they had met as well. So that Harry could have lost his cool- she must have felt him intrusive on her personal space. Yet today she seemed much more collected. Perhaps he hadn’t interrupted her feeling something today.

“There are worse things to endure than death, Sara.” He said to her in an effort to remind her of the spoils of war they were currently feeling on the civilian end of things.

“Will this ‘mistake’ of yours lead to someone living a life that is worse than death?”

“Not this one” Harry sighed, not mentioning the other cases that would out loud.

“Is it the reason you’re looking like you’ve recently been in a boxing match?”

Harry nodded and she understood not to ask any further questions to the matter. They looked at Alec’s statue in silence for a few minutes instead. Harry had to admit that her demeanor today had baffled him a bit. He had always assumed that she was scared of his ability to read her, yet never once had he considered that she too seemed to possess the ability to read him just as well as he was able to read her. The mere prospect frightened him. After all, she was not the only one of the pair who put on a mask before going leaving their home every morning. 

“Why do you come here whenever you feel you’ve wronged someone, Harry?” She asked casually.

“I don’t know. Why do you always come here instead of going out or doing something normal for a change? I know for a fact most of your crew is down at the local pub by now.” 

“Did Lexi tattle on me?”

“No, I saw a few of them in there on my way from work. The last time you all docked I ran into Cora who said you had gone to your ‘brooding place, as she always does’. So why do you come here to sulk?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not like I really miss him so much either. We weren’t close. Maybe it is the idea of him that I am looking for. I don’t know. Peace and quiet maybe.” It baffled him she hadn’t denied sulking, in fact- she had confirmed it. Perhaps this small admittance of sadness was something she allowed herself in this tiny safe space they seemed to have created.

Harry looked at her again. Had they been closer, he would have asked her to elaborate. But they weren’t close- they never had been. Friendly, yes. But never close. He had a much more relaxed and colloquial relationship with her twin, a fact of which he had been reminded several times during their conversation. He also felt that the last time he had asked her a personal question, she had recoiled- that in itself served as a confirmation that it was not his place to interrogate her any further. Harry preferred to leave things civil between them, rather than risk an argument. After all, his initial goal for the evening had been to unwind in peace.

“It was good seeing you, Sara.” He said as he stepped back. She had said she wanted peace and quiet, and he was rather keen on getting some himself.

She nodded as he left towards the park. He turned and gave her a wave she returned as he left towards his house. He stole one last glance at her from afar. She had not moved.

 

* * *

  

Six months later

 

The Kett had ambushed them as they were on their way back from a dig site on Eos. They had half expected something like this to happen, just not the way it did. It was as if they were deliberately after Cora in their attacks, and Dr. Ramirez had ordered them to medevac her back to Habitat 7- it was where the most doctors who specialized in human anatomy resided. 

The surgeon who had worked on Cora said it had been touch and go, and that she was still critically injured. Her arm would never grow back- they seemed to have developed a new poison targeting those with biotic ability, making surgery and reattachment- even that of a cloned limb difficult. It produced allergic reactions to medi gel. In short, it had left her body a mess. This explained why they hadn’t come after Sara at first but targeted Cora. She wouldn’t have been expecting it, she’d have been busy watching Sara’s back when they hit her with the grenade containing aerosol and shrapnel.

They had made it just in time. Or so they thought. The surgeon had consulted with none other than Harry who had overseen the treatment. Despite it being late at night and him not wearing his hospital uniform, he had come to oversee, pulling a white coat over a shirt and some slacks. Sara had appreciated that he had come in on what had seemed to be his spare time. She briefly wondered if he had been on a date, or if he just dressed so nice in general. Had the situation not been so dire, she would have contemplated it longer than she did.

They had sat by her bed for hours, Sara, Vetra and Liam until Cora had woken up and clenched Sara’s hand with her remaining. Cora had looked her in the eyes –terror shining through her as she gasped for air. She looked as if she was freezing and burning up at the same time.

“I-I-m-m s-s-sorry, S-S-Sara. I f-f-failed.”

At which point every alarm possible had gone off. Doctors, nurses and med techs had flooded the room and one nurse had ushered them out in the hallway before shutting the blinds. Harry had come running from his office down the hall, stethoscope in one hand, omni tool activated and a sinister look on his face.

The sound of ribs cracking from chest compressions and the loud noises so noisy compared to Harry’s calm directions. Different from how he had been rescuing Sara on the very same planet they both found themselves stationed at. She remembered glimpses of a semi panicked Harry instructing crewmembers on how to keep her alive.

Now his approach had been calm, despite the flat beeping noise coming from some apparatus. 

He had kept his calm as he exited the room, and as he explained there was nothing more they could do. Even as Sara had fell towards the ground, shaking- being held by Vetra and Liam he had kept his cool and giving a speech he was well versed in by now.

The spoils of war would have made sure he would have given it many times before.

They had caught the poison too late, they would later learn. It had somehow worked on a cellular level they had not been able to identify in time. It had converted her body’s sodium levels into eezo- upsetting the sodium-potassium pumps in her cell walls, causing them to die. Had she not been in a hospital being given enough morphine to subdue an entire Krogan football team, she would have died in a massive agony.

Sara didn’t really listen to him as he spoke his condolences, she didn’t want to. Cora was dead, and it had been Sara’s fault. The Kett had outmaneuvered her. She knew they might at some point, which was why she often changed her tactics in the field.

Fucking Kett for doing this to her.

Fucking Sara for allowing them to.

Sara had gotten free from Vetra’s hold and ran out in an attempt to escape the white walls and noises typically found in a hospital. The smell of antiseptic would follow her outside. Sara kept sprinting outside- away from the smell. She thought she heard Liam yell after her as she went off into the darkness.

She didn’t even know where she was headed until she reached her father’s monument in the park she was now so familiar with.

“THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT, YOU ASSHOLE!” she had shouted and pointed towards the statue of her father before feeling her knees hit the ground. Shaking, she felt her head go red, her eyes filling with tears. She wasn’t really blaming her father for Cora’s death.

“Your fault, Sara Ryder” she whispered as she knelt before the statue of her father. 

“This is not your fault, Sara.” Off course he knew she would be here. She should have known he would come here too- he probably felt guilty as well as she did. Maybe that’s why she went there, maybe some part of her subconscious mind had wanted her to be found.

“Go away, Harry.” Sara nearly choked on keeping the crying away from her voice. 

“No.” He said firmly.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” 

“The word ‘no’ means that I am giving you a negative response to what you were asking. I’m going to stay right here. I don’t care if you want to talk or not, I don’t want you to be alone right now.”

“Fuck off before I head-butt you.” She snarled. Sara realized the position he had found her in- combined with her running away crying from the hospital must have worried him. Damn him for caring. 

“No, Liam agrees- he too doesn’t think you should be alone, so I volunteered to check on you.” 

“Fuck Liam.”

“No, I think he’s right.”

“Fuck you.”

Harry sighed.

“Look, losing a good friend like this… it’s not easy. It’s easier to be angry. But from where I’m sitting, I don’t think you should be alone right now. So here’s my offer: We don’t have to talk or do anything in particular, but I will sit here for as long as you need me to.”

Sara just sat there. He must have taken her silence as a positive, for she heard him sit down on the bench next to where she was sitting on the ground. There was no point in arguing with him either. She wasn’t sure she wanted to anyway. 

“Don’t you have anything better to do than to babysit the pathfinder?”

“Nope.”

“That’s so sad for you.”

“Very. Especially since it’s getting cold out.”

“Should have brought a jacket, then.”

“Wanna go inside?” He asked.

Sara shook her head in response.

Harry leaned back on the bench. He didn’t need to confirm that he would sit right there until she changed her mind, she knew- and she was internally grateful that he had decided to stay with her regardless of her outspoken wishes clearly instructing him to leave her alone. She wanted to be alone with someone, not knowing how that would make any sense if she uttered the words. Once again, Harry just seemed to have read her thoughts. She hated that he knew how to do that.

They sat in silence, him on the bench and her on the ground for well over an hour without moving. He didn’t make a sound, not so much as a grunt or a sigh which Sara appreciated. She noticed the silence between them had still not started to become uncomfortable- as if he already knew what she was thinking, so there wouldn’t be a need to ask her. 

He sat with her until Sara finally moved to get up. She swayed a little- she had not eaten nor drank since before the mission that morning- and felt a strong arm catching her before she fell. He must have moved to stand as soon as she did.

“Careful” Harry said mildly as he caught her. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“I’m not hungry.” She replied.

“That’s not what I asked.” His change of tone from that of a mild concern to a stern voice told her she had no choice. She didn’t really mind that much anyway.

Sara just shook her head in response, which Harry had understood. He gestured for her to walk with him. She did not question where he was taking her, she just walked alongside him until they reached a large prefab on the edge of the park. It’s placement in the immediate vicinity of the park reminded her of the townhouses located around parks on earth, despite the lack of other houses pressed up against it. As she entered and saw its homey environment, she realized he must have taken her to his house.

“Sit.” He said, gesturing to a large white sofa, before going towards a large kitchen. She heard him rummaging around before returning with two glasses and a bottle of orange juice. He sat the two glasses down on the glass table, pouring juice into a glass before offering it to her. She drank the juice and felt her blood sugar rise instantly. She imagined he must have felt the same as he drained his glass.

“Hungry yet?” He asked with a smile, looking into her eyes for the first time that night.

Sara shook her head.

“There’s food in the fridge, help yourself when you’re ready.” He said, putting his feet up on the table. She crawled up in the comfortable space of his sofa, making herself as small and compact as possible. She felt relief that he did not turn on the TV or go get a book, but that he instead just sat there, continuing to be alone with her.

In the end, he managed to trick her into eating a small portion of yoghurt coupled with some fruit. Seemingly satisfied at that, he showed her the guest room and took off towards his own.

Sara got into bed wondering why he had suddenly felt her grief his own responsibility. She remembered he had offered to talk after her father had died, but despite wanting to, she could never really find the words to describe how she felt about it, especially with Scott in a coma and the entire initiative in chaos at the time. She just knew she had to keep pushing forward and talking about it all would probably not have helped her at that time. Now, laying in his guest bed, she wished she had. Maybe having processed all of those unresolved emotions she would find it easier to fall asleep.

After having attempted to sleep for what seemed like hours, but probably had only been one, she had gotten up and walked into his room. She didn’t know why she had felt compelled to wake him, but she couldn’t stand to face the darkness alone for another minute. She didn’t know what drove her to open his door, but the gesture had woken him. He seemed to understand the minute he turned from his side and saw her face.

“Can’t sleep?” He asked. She shook her head as she sat down on the bed.

“Can I stay with you?” She asked. He nodded as she got under the covers.

 

* * *

 

For months they slept like this. Every time she docked, she would go to his house and sleep in his bed. The habit was what let her get a good night’s sleep once in a while. She’d always leave in the morning. Sometimes, in her cabin aboard the Tempest she wondered why he would let her do this. They had never really been that close, friendly, but not friends.

He let her into his bed without question- sometimes they’d even spoon each other throughout the night. He had never once questioned or addressed it. Perhaps it was just one of those unspoken things, or maybe he had just- like Sara- meant to discuss it at some point and just procrastinated the matter until he felt it was too awkward to initiate a conversation about it. Just accepted it as another fact of life.

They would rarely talk whenever she was away on a mission. For the lengthier tours, he might send her an email asking how she was doing and she would reply that she was fine and ask him how he was doing. Mundane and superficial pleasantries, but at least it was some form of contact.

One night after having been out in Kralla’s late at night with Drack, she had sent him a message stating she was having a hard time sleeping alone. He had replied that he too was suffering from a similar issue.

 

* * *

 

On the one-year anniversary of Cora’s death, the politicians had commiserated the day the only way politicians knew how- a statue and a ceremony honoring her sacrifice. It had at least said something like it on the invite, although Sara hadn’t studied it thoroughly. The memorial statue and plaque had been put up- some 30 meters from her father’s monument. Cora would have liked to be close to him. Cora had often regretted that Sara and her father hadn’t had as close of a relationship as she and Alec had. She had never told Sara this, she had told Lexi, not knowing Sara had overheard that conversation in particular. Sara had kept her knowledge of said conversation secret- Cora didn’t want for Sara to know of her bad conscience or she would have told her herself. She also would have detested the 5 or so long speeches from politicians following the unveiling. Sara caught herself thinking that:

“Lucky you don’t have to be here for this, Cora- or you’d have to die from boredom”. She snickered to herself at how Cora would have liked that joke. The thought that she would never hear it let Sara really feel the heaviness in her stomach that Cora would never hear whatever joke Sara had come up with ever again. She also probably would have scolded Sara for making said joke in such an official event, no matter how much she would have agreed with it, or even laughed at it in private. Never more would the pair be able to talk shit about their superiors and their lack in military experience.

The speeches probably bothered Sara so much because they proved that none of them really knew Cora- not like Sara did. Where was the mention of the fact that Cora didn’t like spiders, or that she loved peanut butter on her pancakes? None of them would know, this was information acquired over years of living in close quarters, late at night in bars or out in the field. Sara had decided to not share this information with the world as her commanding officer and friend. She had kept her speech short- even mentioned the fact that Cora was never one for long speeches. A sting if she ever left one towards the politicians.

Her ashes had been spread on Eos in the garden she had planted there what seemed a lifetime ago. Sara had been there just the week before, bringing Harry with her. All she had needed to say to Cora had been said there as they sat in her garden. Sara guessed she would be the one to tend to it now.

The war on the remaining Kett in Andromeda had not left Sara well. She had received numerous scars and several injuries over the course of a year. As she stood on Habitat 7, looking down at the beautiful flowers planted by Cora’s memorial statue she whispered:

“I’m sorry Cora. I miss you a lot you know”.

“It is still not your fault.” Sara felt Harry come up behind her, standing close to her.

Sara did not reply to Harry’s statement. She didn’t exactly disagree, there was no way she could have predicted the Kett coming for Cora and not her, it was so far from their modus operandi that it succeeded. That thought of rationality did little to settle Sara’s guilt- Cora was a member on her team and had been for years. It had been Sara’s job to protect her team.

“Surprised to not see Scott around here either. How’s he holding up?” Harry was referring to Scotts absence on Eos, which was why she had brought Harry instead. The thought made Sara’s stomach jump.

“I don’t know where he is. We’re not talking at the moment.” Luckily, she was speaking to Harry who somehow knew to read all her cues regarding when to shut up and when to press her. Besides, she suspected he already knew half the story. She knew Harry and Scott would sometimes go out for a beer, talking about life and everything. He had cared for Scott whilst he was in and recovering from his coma and they had formed some sort of weird bond over late night playing cards and talking shit, and it had stuck with them both ever since.

After a brief silence shared between them Sara felt his hand on her shoulder.

“He’ll come around.” Harry said. “Just give him some time.” 

Sara nodded and followed him back to his house, his arm around her shoulders, her arm around his waist.

 


	2. Chapter 2

She didn’t remember exactly when she decided to list Harry as her emergency contact. She needed to update it- the previous ones had been Cora and Scott. As Cora was no more and Scott and Sara weren’t currently on speaking terms, Harry seemed the logical choice- especially after Lexi insisting she couldn’t pick another team mate anymore, due to “new regulations”.

In the event that her choice in emergency contact had surprised Lexi, she had hidden it well. More likely it hadn’t- she and Harry were old friends, and Lexi had a way of extracting much information with little effort, usually just from looking at two people interact.

She had meant to inform him in a message, but she never managed to phrase the message quite the way she liked it and procrastinated finishing and hitting send until she had forgotten completely about it all. It was unlikely she would need an emergency contact, after all; she had gotten much more careful in her tactics since Cora’s passing.

 

* * *

 

The nightmares came and went. Sometimes she’d wake up screaming- but only in the privacy of her quarters on the tempest. They had been especially prevalent during the anniversaries of Habitat 7. Then for months after Cora had died.

Kallo, being Salarian thus needing very little sleep usually came down with a cup of warm milk once he heard her rummaging around her suite those nights. Like Harry, Kallo knew that there was no use in making her talk about what was really bothering her, so he sat with her in silence as she drank her milk. Sometimes she’d ask him to tell her some stories about the Tempest, even though they both knew she had learnt them all by heart by now. Other times he’d tell her about Sur-Kesh. She regretted never having been there in real life before leaving for Andromeda.

Once he’d left her for the remainder of the night, she’d contemplate sending Harry a message, but she rarely did. After all, they rarely talked and with the war on he had as much stress to deal with as she had. If she did send him a message these days it was to tell him what her words couldn’t- that she missed him whenever she was on duty. He always told her he missed her too. In writing, it seemed, they were able to express what they couldn’t face to face- not with words anyway. Sara didn’t need words. She knew from their actions that they meant something to each other- which was all she needed.

 

* * *

 

Harry had gotten used to Sara sleeping in his bed faster than he’d have believed.

He didn’t know when they had started holding each other at night, he just knew he had awoken one morning and found his arms wrapped around her, her clutching them like a lifeline. They’d never go to bed holding each other, they would just somehow find each other during the night. When she wasn’t on Habitat-7 his house seemed emptier somehow, which was weird- she never brought any personal belongings, only a clean set of clothes.

He didn’t know when he had given her a spare key, only that he had left it on top of her neatly stacked clothes one morning and that she had taken it.

He lived at work most days. His day would consist of rounds, re-training med techs and prepping the curriculum for when the next generation would start training as doctors. 

“If there is anyone left to train after this war” the voice in the back of his head would argue. Harry would try to shake it off. Their losses weren’t that great, not in numbers anyway, yet. He’d oversee whether or not some of the new drugs in Andromeda would be ready for clinical testing. Then he’d always spend an hour for looking over the newest research on the Krogan genophage. He always found the genophage to be a complete and utter tasteless thing to do to an enemy. He wanted it gone with every fiber of his body.

He still practiced as a surgeon, not wanting to take a complete administrative position just yet. Long nights spent fixing APEX failures, growing limbs to reattach. He knew he would have to eventually, his premature arthritis was starting to bother him immensely. It was only a matter of time before he would no longer be able to hold a scalpel.

For the past decade he had assigned some of the best researchers and scientists to figure out a way to cure Ellen Ryder for AEND. He hadn’t agreed with the way Alec had brought her, and once Scott had told him when he had found out what his father had done he had wanted to re-kill the fucker. It also helped him understand why Sara had taken to lead more of a reclusive state than before, trusting only those on her team, rarely going out. It also explained why she did not want to go back to Habitat 7 at first, even after they named it Ryder 1. She felt the betrayal too great, or maybe she just didn’t like reliving dying again. 

The AEND project had not gone well. They were no closer now than they were when they had started. Sara knew that and if Harry would have to guess, he thought this was why the twins had seemed to have grown further and further apart over the past decade- as Scott initially had remained optimistic. Her refusing him to join her team after Cora’s death must have been the final straw for him.

Harry thought he knew why she wouldn’t want him with her, although he kept his thoughts to himself when Scott had discussed it with him. Harry’s working theory was that with Cora gone, Scott and Ellen were the last remaining family she had. Cora’s death might even have reminded Sara of the mortality rate of her profession. Even if they weren’t talking, she wanted Scott alive and safe. It might also be why Sara still kept Harry at arm’s length, except for at night. She might not want to get close to anyone if they just planned to die on her.

Harry knew it was only a matter of time before they would have to decide on what to do with Ellen. It didn’t seem right to keep her in stasis for much longer.

 

* * *

 

It had been a cold fall morning on Habitat 7 the first time they had kissed. Harry didn’t know exactly what compelled him to do it, she had come back in the early hours in the morning, having been given some rare time off after having nearly been killed in a Roekaar act of terrorism on Havarl.

Harry had been sitting with his coffee and a medical file waiting anxiously for her to return in one piece as she locked herself in. She had walked up to him and hugged him very tight. Once they broke apart, Harry had taken some of the hair away from her face, cupped her cheek and just got caught up in the moment. He was never sure who had actually kissed whom first, but the moment their lips met she dropped her bag to the floor so her arms were free and let one rest comfortably but tightly against the back of his neck, the other stroking his back.

He felt her tongue seeking his and wondered for a brief second if she had wanted this for quite some time and realized from her most recent near-death experience that they would only live once. He knew that he at least on some level always had felt something for her in some way, even back when they were on the same team. She moaned into his mouth and he felt himself growing harder.

She shed her jacket to the floor and removed her top, looking at him. Harry removed his shirt which he threw over his head before lifting her, feeling her legs lock around his waist as he carried them towards his bedroom.

He put her down on the bed and he removed her trousers. She unbuckled his belt. After kissing ferociously for a while and undressing what little remained of their clothes, he entered her. She gasped at his size, kissing him even more wanting, needing than before.

He rocked inside of her, kissing every inch of her upper torso as he felt her getting close. At the gasp from her mouth whispering his name and the clenching of her inner walls, he found his own release with a moan. Sweaty, they both fell asleep. Naked and legs intertwined.

 

* * *

 

Waking up with his arms around Sara felt natural. Like they were the only two pieces of a puzzle. He liked the way she smelled in the morning, her hair undone and her expression at peace. It was perfect, or as close to perfection as Harry dared to dream. True perfection, in Harry’s mind, could only be obtained in little moments to be savored- only then would he be able to make it into a memory.

Harry had a growing number of memories to keep him going through the stone-cold reality that was life. He hoped he was creating as many happy memories for Sara as she was creating for him.

Most days she docked they would have breakfast before she took off on another one of her missions. Harry had started to worry about her in an ever increasingly degree since she had started to spend her nights with him, more so now they had made their affections towards one another known. He had been painfully reminded of this when she had gotten a concussion that rendered her unconscious and Lexi had called him to report the injury. As she was unconscious, it was up to him to decide what to do.

At first, he had thought this was because he technically still oversaw the pathfinding team’s medical bay- it had taken him a while to realize he wasn’t receiving the call due to the chain of command, but rather because Sara had listed him as her emergency contact. That tiny confirming action proved to him that he had not only won her trust, but also sparked his ever-increasing worry for her out in the field. 

 

* * *

 

Sara woke up, not immediately recognizing her surroundings. She felt an IV tube connected to her arm and deduced she must have been unconscious for a while. She stirred and looked around for any hints as to where she might be when she saw someone sitting in the edge of the room. She knew who it was before Harry started speaking.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” His words would have sounded and felt harder had he not sounded so relieved at her awakening. He put down what looked like a data pad and slowly approached her bedside.

“Kinda, yeah,” She murmured, although she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened.

“What were you doing, taking your helmet off?” He asked.

“I was playing soccer, Harry” She replied.

“Yes, I know this is the result of the antics of one Liam Kosta.” He sounded as if he was torn between amusement and the want to reprimand her.

“You don’t wear a helmet playing soccer, Harry!”

“Normally I would agree, but you were playing the Krogan team for fucks sake.”

“I actually don’t remember much after the coin toss.”

“You wouldn’t. You got into an argument with the Krogan captain immediately after kick off. According to by-standers you’ve a pretty good head butt for a human. Drack’s still laughing his ass off out in the waiting room. You’ve been out of it for two days.” 

“Sorry…” She said sheepishly. She felt ‘sorry’ wouldn’t really cover her guilt over worrying Harry, but it was the only thing she could think off. She wished she could explain that she wasn’t sorry for playing football, she certainly wasn’t sorry for head-butting that Krogan twat of a captain; she was sorry Harry had worried.

Harry didn’t say a word as he approached her bedside and kissed her forehead. She grabbed him by his collar and took his lips for a longer kiss. As they broke apart, she studied him. Wearing his civvies, he appeared to not have shaved for at least two days.

“Still mad?” she asked as he stroked her shoulder gently, his face nuzzled into her cheek.

“I was never mad, Sara. I was concerned.” He murmured into her cheek.

“No, about me not telling you I put you as my ‘in case of emergency’ contact. I assume that’s why I’m here- they called you, right?” 

“That’s not something to be mad about, is it?” Harry said with a soft smile as he looked into her eyes.

“Still, I should have asked...”

“No. I’m glad you placed your trust in me. Now go back to sleep. I’ll take you home tomorrow.”

“I sleep better when you’re in the room with me.” 

As vulnerable as she felt voicing her wish, she also felt incredibly relieved when Harry once again kissed her forehead.

“I know” He said and went back to his chair and pulled up a data pad. She wondered if he had sat with her the entire time. 


	3. Chapter 3

He never voiced his concerns of her safety in the field to her because he knew it was not his place to do so. He just hoped he could prove through his actions that he had come to care for her more than anyone else in the universe. It took a few months for Harry to muster enough courage to tell Sara that he loved her. They never were the overly romantic sort; their relationship had become one that was truly beyond words. They had watched a movie after having spent a rare day off together and she had fallen asleep with her head on his chest. His couch had been rather comfortable, and he had decided to tell her before she drifted off to sleep. 

“I love you so much, you know that, don’t you?” He had whispered.

“I know. I love you too.” She had tiredly replied.

His arms cradled her and held her even more tightly as he kissed her forehead whilst they both drifted off to sleep. This act alone had bought her a few months of sleep without any nightmares, wherever she was.

 

* * *

 

Sara stayed behind on Habitat 7 for a week after Ellen’s memorial service. She had stayed in his bed and refused meals for the first two days.

It had been a private affair, only Sara, Scott, Harry and the researchers who had worked on her case.

Sara and Scott had not spoken a word to each other during the entire thing. When discussing whether or not to keep going with the project, they had agreed that it was kinder to let her go at this point. Other than that, like with Harry, their relationship seemed beyond words. At least they had been able to move past their differences and make up, somehow. 

After their very private funeral, Sara had walked with Harry back to his house. He had put his arm around her and tried to make her eat. She had shaken her head and asked if he could to go to bed with her, despite it still being early. That had been the first time they had gone to bed snuggled up against each other instead of finding each other through the night.

He stroked her hair gently as he held her through her shaking and her tears. For once he did not know what to say.

That night was the first time he ever heard her screaming in her sleep.

 

* * *

 

Reyes would message her from time to time. “Checking in” he called it.

“Making sure business is still good”, she said to herself and replied courtly.

Their relationship, as Sara had remembered it, had been a mostly good one. She would still trust him with her life, just not with much else anymore.

They had always agreed- one hundred percent disclosure regarding big picture stuff. He had broken that agreement twice. Once in his plan to take Sloane Kelly out, back when the agreement was still an unspoken one, the second time a little over three years ago. That, combined with ever decreasing feelings for the shady bastard had done it for Sara. She had packed up the very few belongings she kept in his house and left. He had not stopped her, for he knew better. He had not made a mistake, he had just thought he could get away with it.

Once Cora had died, his messages had gone from the usual business talk to include some more personal questions. Sara wasn’t blind, she knew she didn’t look all right and that he had asked her more out of concern than a wish to get back together.

Nevertheless, she never answered the Charlatans inquiries to her health with more than a court “I am fine”.

He wasn’t privy to such information anymore, she said to herself.

“He betrayed me” she would think. The thought didn’t hurt anymore, not as it had used to.

 

* * *

 

 

Had they been in the milky way they would have been happy, Harry always thought. Or, they were happy here too, just in a different way. Upon further investigation as to why he thought they would have been happier in the milky way, he had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t that they wouldn’t have been happier, things would just have been less complicated.

Harry somehow thought if they had been in the milky way, their relationship might have been easier, or at least not haunted by those nightmares living in a war would give people. Fewer complications, was the word he was looking for. Harry frequently had to remind himself of ‘the complication paradox’- it would of course make whatever complications they faced in a simpler existence seem more sinister than they felt like. Maybe, in an alternate universe, this would have been his fantasy of easy. 

They’d date in a more traditional way, had they done so in the milky way. He would have proposed after two years of dating, and they would have had a small wedding with friends and family present. They might have even bought a house, and raised a few children- he wanted 3, she wanted 1, so they might have settled on two.

He would have made pancakes on Sundays. She wouldn’t go near the kitchen if she could help it, so he would have made them.

She would have risen in the ranks of the Alliance, he would have kept working in the neurosurgery field. Their children would probably hate all of her public service and his need to save people with the long workdays that followed and went into the private sector for work.

They would have hosted dinner parties with friends, gone on long vacations with their kids to make up for all their overtime. They would not lead a perfect life- for there is no such thing in the adult world Harry always said- mostly a reference to a bizarre joke from his twenties that had yet to let go.

Maybe they’d even have a dog. She always loved dogs.

Dreams and daring to dream, in Harry mind was what scared him the most. And this was Andromeda, not the milky way.

Maybe, had they both stayed in the milky way, they would never have gotten together. That prospect was a scary one he did not intend to explore.

 

* * *

 

They married in the fall on Eos, right near Cora’s garden. Liam had been Sara’s ‘maid of honor’ as he had joked to Liam’s dismay. Scott had walked her down the aisle. Harry had chosen Lexi for his own ‘best man’. As the beautiful sun set over the monolith in the far distance across the lake- the very same monolith where Sara had first met Drack he had been told- he knew that this was one of the perfect moments he would have to remember.

Originally deciding on only having one child, they wound up with two. “Buy one, get one for free” Sara had joked when the ultrasound technician had confirmed two heads and two sets of feet. The twins proved an exhausting challenge, but they both loved being parents so much they didn’t care much about how drained they both were in stolen moments of sleeping together. Harry thought he would see pure happiness in her once in a while when the children were playing in the yard. She would sit and watch them for extended periods of time, smiling to herself. Scott would come over as often as he could, drinking a beer or two and playing with his niece and nephew. Sometimes Gil and Jill would bring their kids too, for one of Harry’s legendary barbeques, usually accompanied by Kesh and her family too.

It was the closest thing to a big family they could get. Drack, especially acted like a surrogate parent to Sara, for which Harry was grateful. She needed an older mentor, especially after the closest she had ever come to having an older sister had perished, all those years ago.

Yet, he noticed Sara’s mind wasn’t what it had been the day he had met her. Neither was his. They had both seen too much pain to be able to forget all of it completely. Lexi referred to it as “scarring on the emotions”. The notion made sense to Harry, just like surgical scars could hurt for years after a procedure, so could emotional trauma. 

The picturesque lazy barbecue filled Sundays were too perfect for them, according to Harry. He never voiced his concerns that something horrible was going to happen when the universe had had enough of their happiness and needed to balance it out. Had he voiced them to Lexi, she would have written it off as a side effect of seeing too much. But one particularly happy afternoon, his and Sara’s eyes met and he thought he could see it in her eyes too, for the briefest of seconds.

Dread.

Daring to love and to dream also came with the possibility for loss and disappointment, he would think. He reminded himself to appreciate the life he had as long as he had it.

 

* * *

 

Vetra was the second member of her team to die in the course of her duty fighting Kett, nearly ten years after Cora. Shortly thereafter in a Roekaar terrorist attack, Suvi followed. Sara had cursed herself for not killing Akksul some twenty years ago. Their deaths happened within such a short timeframe that Sara decided to quit working all together, her children were still young and she wanted to see them grow up.

Kallo died shortly after the deaths of Vetra and Suvi, from old age they said. Sara always secretly thought it was heartbreak. 

After another Roekaar attack left a retired Drack dead and rendered Liam who was visiting him with only one eye a few years after that, Sara quit eating and refused to leave their bed, not even to drink water. Harry took leave from his job as chief of surgery to look after her and sent the children to live with Scott for a while so they wouldn’t see their mother like this.

Nothing Harry did would remedy her ever increasing depression; she was deteriorating at a faster pace than he could keep up with. One day, she quit speaking all together, sitting in their bed for weeks looking like a ghost. The exception came at night, when she would wake up screaming in terror. Even though she after some medication managed to regain her speaking and seemed to eat at least a little, Harry thought she had given up on life completely. It pained him more than words could describe to see her like this. He sometimes wished they could trade places, so she would stop feeling like she did. Like it was her fault somehow. All he could do was hold her and hire someone to oversee her mental health recovery from home.

She hated hospitals.

 

* * *

 

It was Harry who found her the time she had tried to end her suffering herself, sitting in the memorial park in front of her father’s statue.  She wasn’t speaking coherently, and she was drifting further away from him mentally than ever before. He had to admit her to the hospital, as he felt he should have done a long time ago. He blamed himself. He never trusted anyone to understand his Sara the way he did.

 

* * *

 

Years later Sara had healed somewhat. Harry always stressed the ‘somewhat’ because even the simplest of surgeries left scars. He remembered Lexi’s words that it would be similar with the mind, only the scarring occurred on one’s emotions. Perhaps even worse, as they could not be seen, just felt. It was perhaps this that had prompted her to laugh when the doctor had reluctantly given her the diagnosis.

“So ironic”, she had said between clenching her stomach.

“Here I wanted to off myself a few years ago, battled the giant many-headed monster that is depression only to die from this? It’s… Hilarious!”

Harry had not found her laughing the least bit amusing. He assumed it had been the illness, or maybe the former illness that had prompted such a reaction, not her. Being told there was nothing more anyone could do should not trigger such feelings of amusement. As they exited the hospital, the reality had hit him – she would finally die on Habitat 7, the very thing he had tried so hard to prevent back in the day. Perhaps not today, certainly not when they had first landed there, but soon- if the other doctors prognosis was to be believed.

His misery must have shown, because she stopped, cupped his cheek with her hand, and spoke to him in an awfully relaxed and happy voice: 

“Relax, my darling.”

“How can you possibly tell me to relax right now?” Harry exclaimed in disbelief. “Were you even AT the same doctor’s appointment as I was?”

“When your back is against the wall, use it.” Sara had replied calmly, looking lovingly into his eyes. He knew what she meant by it. There was nothing more to be done, might as well enjoy the time they had. Perhaps it was her long military career that had made her see this as just another order to be executed? Or maybe she had seen just too much loss to fear death the way he did. Perhaps she was happy she had managed to survive for as long as she had.

At night, Harry pleaded with the universe to give him more time with her. He wasn’t ready.

 

* * *

 

Harry been with her the morning she had finally succumbed to her illness. She looked peaceful and so beautiful where she lay in their bed. Three years had passed since her dreadful diagnosis -the doctor had only given her one- and she had seemed cheerier and more at peace than ever before. In retrospect, Harry knew it was because she probably knew she wasn’t long for this world and planned to use the most of her time with her husband their grown children. It did not make it any less hard for Harry to accept he would nevermore hear her voice or hold her in the mornings. With her passing, Harry no longer feared his own death. He wished he could have told her that.

 

* * *

Five years later.

 

 “Hey honey” He said as he kissed her statue on its forehead. 

“I miss you” He continues in a low whisper so only she can hear and put another flower down at her feet. He had gone to her statue every morning before work to say hi, bringing flowers. He usually went alone, save for the twins 25th birthday. They had all come out to lay flowers at the feet of her statue.

“The kids are fine. Claire and Asher are acing grad school and growing into fine adults. I think Asher’s dating Gil and Jill’s youngest. Not sure. Scott’s disgusted at the thought, with him and Gil being married and all… I wish you could have seen them though. Claire looks so much like you...”

He stood at her statue in silence for a while. He rarely looked at her face, but today that changed. He looked her in the eye and suppressed a tear. It had been five years since her passing, and he still missed her as if she had died the day before. The house even still carried her smell, as if she had never left. 

“I was at the doctors yesterday.” Harry whispered.

“I haven’t got as long as we thought at first. Maybe the universe gave you a few of my years to keep you with me longer, and now I have to settle the tab. It’s kind of funny if you think about it because I always thought that out of the two of us I’d be the one to go first. We never really did talk about the age thing, did we… huh. I just realized. But that’s fate for you...” 

He stood in silence, looking at his wife’s statue for another second. He missed the peaceful expression she always had in the early hours in the morning. The way her hair would come undone throughout the night, yet still smell so divine.

Another tear escaped him as he whispered in a soft voice:

“I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

A gust of warm air brushed past Harry’s left ear, as if she was still with him, whispering in his ear. He dried his eyes and turned slowly towards his house. 

A white butterfly followed him throughout the park.

 

* * *

 

Harry remembered early mornings in bed with his wife as he drifted off to sleep. Still in their bed, where they had shared so many nights and mornings, both happy and unhappy.

His daughter was laying on top of the bed holding his hand, and his son was holding the other from a chair at the bedside. He looked at his children and saw his wife’s eyes, which brought him comfort in his final moments.

“I love you” he whispered, as he thought he saw her, coming to get him.

A pair of white butterflies were swarming against each other in their garden as their children sat inside, holding his hand and mourning their loss.


End file.
